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King Arthur is one of the most annoying bastards to research I have ever come across. He's one of the most famous figures in all of medieval legend, there's a frankly overstimulating amount of primary literature on him (much of which is surprisingly hard to find English translations of), and yet almost none of it is consistent with itself or the real historical period it's set in. I've been trying so hard to pin down an exact timeline for Arthur's misadventures, and it's a fool's errand, because not only do you get drastically different dates depending on the author, but there's a 90% chance this man never existed at all. Our only contemporary chronicle of this time period is the De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, written in the 6th century CE by the British monk Gildas, and he makes absolutely no mention of anyone named Arthur. Even when Gildas describes the Battle of Badon, the conflict in which later literature supposes that Arthur slayed an entire army of Saxons by himself, Arthur is nowhere to be found. To me, that's pretty damning for the existence of Arthur. It's not impossible there was some badass 6th century Romano-Celtic warlord named Arthur whose life just got waaaay overemphasized by later authors, but there simply isn't any archaeological evidence to back up the existence of such a man. The closest that comes up is the Artognou Stone found in the ruins of Tintagel Castle (the legendary birthplace of Arthur). This is an inscribed fragment of stone either dedicated to or made by the eponymous "Artognou" in the 6th century. While this seems pretty tempting on the surface, the two names are etymologically distinct ("Artognou" is Brittonic for "bear-knowledge" while "Arthur" derives from Latin "Artorius"). It's not impossible that the names got confused over time, but as a linguist, I tend to believe that if it's not a cognate, it's a coincidence. This is also, again, the only inscription found in all of Britain potentially referencing a man whose conquests supposedly stretched from Rome to Iceland, and it doesn't even claim this Artognou to be a king. Color me a buzzkill but I'm extremely skeptical of the prospect of a historical Arthur.

So okay, that discussion aside, how did we end up with the narrative of Arthur we have today? Usually, the next source people point to after Gildas is the Historia Brittonum, written by Nennius in the 9th century. This isn't entirely proper, though, as Arthur does make brief appearances in early Welsh poetry. Most notably, his name is brought up in Y Gododdin, a poem which references Arthur by comparing famous fallen warriors to him as a gold standard. After Nennius comes the Annales Cambriae, a 10th century chronicle which actually provides some dates and introduces the figure of Mordred, later made Arthur's traitorous nephew. All of these mentions are pretty minimalist, however. It's not until Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th century work, Historia Regum Britanniae, that we really start to see some meat on this legend's bones. That meat is of course horribly mutated and filled with all sorts of historical inaccuracies, but it's really the foundation for our basic Arthur narrative. This is then supplemented by the works of Chrétien de Troyes, a roughly contemporary French poet who gave us the stories more centered on the Knights of the Round Table, such as Lancelot and Percival. It's really at this point that the narrative completely gives up on pretending to be historical, and thus is where my eyes kinda start to glaze over. Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory is usually listed as the last primary source on Arthurian legend, but this is a 15th century work more intended as a simplified codification of all the previously existing traditions.

So okay, sources out of the way, what's the most cohesive version of the narrative we can suss out from this nightmare? Usually, the narrative starts in 410 CE, when the crumbling Roman Empire completely pulled out of Britain to deal with the Visigoths. Utterly undefended, the Brittons were harassed by their Celtic neighbors on all sides, forcing them to hire Anglo-Saxon mercenaries to kick some ass for them. Once the Saxons settled down in Britain, however, they decided hey actually, I think imma stay if that's cool with you. Evidently this was not cool with the Brittons, thus beginning the long brutal rivalry between the English and the Welsh… and let's be honest, everyone else too. At some point, a man named Uther Pendragon became the leader of the Britons, and of course he had some incredibly important business keeping his kingly mind occupied. Like banging that smoking hot queen of Tintagel, Igraine, obviously. Only problem was that she was already happily married. That was certainly inconvenient, but Uther had a literal wizard in his pocket. Merlin, piece of shit, polymorphs Uther into the spitting image of Igraine's husband to sneak into bed with her. The result of this dick move is of course the birth of Arthur nine months later. Instead of taking responsibility for his actions, though, King Uther does what all kings do: push it on someone else. Merlin takes the boy into the woods or something and trains him until he is 15. At this point, Uther has died and the Saxons are at everyone's doorstep. Arthur proves himself worthy of ascending to the throne by pulling a magical sword from a stone, which is often conflated with Excalibur, but no it turns out that's a whole nother story. That sword was instead given to him by the mysterious Lady of the Lake on the Isle of Avalon to be wielded at the Battle of Badon.

Badon was Arthur's first major victory over the Saxons, and it's our first hiccup for his historicity… you know besides the wizard shit. Gildas records that the Battle of Badon took place the year of his birth, and Bede clarifies that it was 44 years after the first arrival of the Saxon leaders Hengist and Horsa in 449. This gives us a pretty clear cut date of 493 CE, simple enough. The Annales Cambriae really throws a wrench into this timeline, though, claiming the battle actually took place in 516 with no further clarification. At first glance, this seems to be the timeline that Geoffrey is basing his narrative off of. He states that 12 years of peace followed the Battle of Badon, then Arthur spent 9 years conquering a completely ahistorical amount of territory that stretched from Norway to Gaul and the as yet undiscovered Iceland. The next five years are divided between his war against the fictional Roman Emperor Lucius Tiberius, and against his usurper nephew Mordred, who ultimately slays Arthur at the Battle of Camlann in 542. This is really weird though because the Annales Cambriae lists the Battle of Camlann as taking place in 537, so if Geoffrey is referencing this text, I don’t know why he'd pluck only one of the two dates it assigns to Arthur.

This is, of course, assuming Geoffrey or the author of the Annales Cambriae, who both lived some 500 years after the supposed events, are writing anything resembling real history as opposed to a fantasy story with fairies and wizards and conquering Iceland. I don't know why conquering Iceland irks me more than fairies and wizards, but it does. Technically, reading the text as is, Geoffrey does seem to indicate seasons passing in between the year intervals, suggesting that the 12, 9, and 5 years aren't necessarily in direct succession to one another, but it's still really a stretch to extrapolate out the missing 23 years required to push Badon back to 493 in this narrative. This isn't even factoring in the tales of Arthur's famous Knights of the Round Table, many of which are born and live full lives with children of their own all within Arthur's reign, which would be a lot easier with the 493 date. It's a bit like one of those stress balls where if you squeeze one side, the innards go all lopsided on the other end, and you can't get it to squeeze into one shape. Don't even get me started on the Grail Quest, which supposedly took place 454 years after the death of Jesus. At the latest, that would put us at 487, well before any attested date for Badon, and you can probably start to see why this is giving me an aneurysm.

All of that aside, I think it is interesting to note that Geoffrey has Arthur's conquest of Rome set in 537, which would line up exactly with the historical reconquest of Rome by Belisarius. I have to wonder if there was ever some tradition associated with this that just completely went over Geoffrey's head or if it's simply coincidence. Either way, it's certainly something I'll be using in my project. Honestly, given Arthur's probably mythical nature and the complete nonsense any of his timelines written centuries later are, Monty Python's 932 (a number they chose at random just because they thought it was funny) may as well be the correct date. It's certainly the first image that always comes to my mind when I think of King Arthur anyways. Speaking of which…

Design notes, this was way more difficult than I was expecting it to be. Not for lack of reference images, but for an overabundance of them. I think the problem with coming up with a unique design for King Arthur is that he pretty much is the basis for the stereotypical silhouette of a medieval king. King Arthur is what pops into everyone’s mind when they're told to envision a generic ruler. Grant it, many of these interpretations are based more on the clothing of Geoffrey's time than the Late Roman Period in which Arthur actually lived, which does slightly narrow things down a bit I suppose. I primarily took inspiration from Walter Crane's illustrations for Henry Gilbert's 1911 book "King Arthur's Knights", and N.C. Wyeth's illustrations for the 1922 edition of "The Boys' King Arthur", with some bits and bobs thrown in from Howard Pyle's 1903 illustration of Arthur pulling the sword from the stone and Charles Butler's famous 1903 painting of Arthur donning the crown. For his shield, which is supposed to bear the icon of the Virgin Mary, I referenced the wall paintings of the Hagia Sophia. One has to wonder how Mary feels about her face taking the brunt of all those spears and swords.

Excalibur meanwhile is pretty much my own design. I'm actually really happy with the concept sketch I drew, but sadly it seems it was too intricate to show up very well in the scan. I'll probably draw a larger picture of the sword itself just to show off the details and maybe go more into the history of the weapon which is a bit beyond this blurb. I primarily made it a combination of a Roman spatha and the Celtic man-handled swords. I also threw some Ogham engravings on there, which did manage to show up quite clearly in the scan. I'm happy for that, at least. I'm actually quite happy with the design overall. It may be a little too medieval in some areas, but I still think this is an Arthur I'd expect to come galloping into battle alongside the real MVP, Belisarius. Sorry Arthur, he's just so much cooler than you. You probably didn't exist anyway so you probably don't mind. Take it up with Mary. You gotta answer for messing up her face like that anyways.

Description
King Arthur is one of the most annoying bastards to research I have ever come across. He's one of the most famous figures in all of medieval legend, there's a frankly overstimulating amount of primary literature on him (much of which is surprisingly hard to find English translations of), and yet almost none of it is consistent with itself or the real historical period it's set in. I've been trying so hard to pin down an exact timeline for Arthur's misadventures, and it's a fool's errand, because not only do you get drastically different dates depending on the author, but there's a 90% chance this man never existed at all. Our only contemporary chronicle of this time period is the De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, written in the 6th century CE by the British monk Gildas, and he makes absolutely no mention of anyone named Arthur. Even when Gildas describes the Battle of Badon, the conflict in which later literature supposes that Arthur slayed an entire army of Saxons by himself, Arthur is nowhere to be found. To me, that's pretty damning for the existence of Arthur. It's not impossible there was some badass 6th century Romano-Celtic warlord named Arthur whose life just got waaaay overemphasized by later authors, but there simply isn't any archaeological evidence to back up the existence of such a man. The closest that comes up is the Artognou Stone found in the ruins of Tintagel Castle (the legendary birthplace of Arthur). This is an inscribed fragment of stone either dedicated to or made by the eponymous "Artognou" in the 6th century. While this seems pretty tempting on the surface, the two names are etymologically distinct ("Artognou" is Brittonic for "bear-knowledge" while "Arthur" derives from Latin "Artorius"). It's not impossible that the names got confused over time, but as a linguist, I tend to believe that if it's not a cognate, it's a coincidence. This is also, again, the only inscription found in all of Britain potentially referencing a man whose conquests supposedly stretched from Rome to Iceland, and it doesn't even claim this Artognou to be a king. Color me a buzzkill but I'm extremely skeptical of the prospect of a historical Arthur.

So okay, that discussion aside, how did we end up with the narrative of Arthur we have today? Usually, the next source people point to after Gildas is the Historia Brittonum, written by Nennius in the 9th century. This isn't entirely proper, though, as Arthur does make brief appearances in early Welsh poetry. Most notably, his name is brought up in Y Gododdin, a poem which references Arthur by comparing famous fallen warriors to him as a gold standard. After Nennius comes the Annales Cambriae, a 10th century chronicle which actually provides some dates and introduces the figure of Mordred, later made Arthur's traitorous nephew. All of these mentions are pretty minimalist, however. It's not until Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th century work, Historia Regum Britanniae, that we really start to see some meat on this legend's bones. That meat is of course horribly mutated and filled with all sorts of historical inaccuracies, but it's really the foundation for our basic Arthur narrative. This is then supplemented by the works of Chrétien de Troyes, a roughly contemporary French poet who gave us the stories more centered on the Knights of the Round Table, such as Lancelot and Percival. It's really at this point that the narrative completely gives up on pretending to be historical, and thus is where my eyes kinda start to glaze over. Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory is usually listed as the last primary source on Arthurian legend, but this is a 15th century work more intended as a simplified codification of all the previously existing traditions.

So okay, sources out of the way, what's the most cohesive version of the narrative we can suss out from this nightmare? Usually, the narrative starts in 410 CE, when the crumbling Roman Empire completely pulled out of Britain to deal with the Visigoths. Utterly undefended, the Brittons were harassed by their Celtic neighbors on all sides, forcing them to hire Anglo-Saxon mercenaries to kick some ass for them. Once the Saxons settled down in Britain, however, they decided hey actually, I think imma stay if that's cool with you. Evidently this was not cool with the Brittons, thus beginning the long brutal rivalry between the English and the Welsh… and let's be honest, everyone else too. At some point, a man named Uther Pendragon became the leader of the Britons, and of course he had some incredibly important business keeping his kingly mind occupied. Like banging that smoking hot queen of Tintagel, Igraine, obviously. Only problem was that she was already happily married. That was certainly inconvenient, but Uther had a literal wizard in his pocket. Merlin, piece of shit, polymorphs Uther into the spitting image of Igraine's husband to sneak into bed with her. The result of this dick move is of course the birth of Arthur nine months later. Instead of taking responsibility for his actions, though, King Uther does what all kings do: push it on someone else. Merlin takes the boy into the woods or something and trains him until he is 15. At this point, Uther has died and the Saxons are at everyone's doorstep. Arthur proves himself worthy of ascending to the throne by pulling a magical sword from a stone, which is often conflated with Excalibur, but no it turns out that's a whole nother story. That sword was instead given to him by the mysterious Lady of the Lake on the Isle of Avalon to be wielded at the Battle of Badon.

Badon was Arthur's first major victory over the Saxons, and it's our first hiccup for his historicity… you know besides the wizard shit. Gildas records that the Battle of Badon took place the year of his birth, and Bede clarifies that it was 44 years after the first arrival of the Saxon leaders Hengist and Horsa in 449. This gives us a pretty clear cut date of 493 CE, simple enough. The Annales Cambriae really throws a wrench into this timeline, though, claiming the battle actually took place in 516 with no further clarification. At first glance, this seems to be the timeline that Geoffrey is basing his narrative off of. He states that 12 years of peace followed the Battle of Badon, then Arthur spent 9 years conquering a completely ahistorical amount of territory that stretched from Norway to Gaul and the as yet undiscovered Iceland. The next five years are divided between his war against the fictional Roman Emperor Lucius Tiberius, and against his usurper nephew Mordred, who ultimately slays Arthur at the Battle of Camlann in 542. This is really weird though because the Annales Cambriae lists the Battle of Camlann as taking place in 537, so if Geoffrey is referencing this text, I don’t know why he'd pluck only one of the two dates it assigns to Arthur.

This is, of course, assuming Geoffrey or the author of the Annales Cambriae, who both lived some 500 years after the supposed events, are writing anything resembling real history as opposed to a fantasy story with fairies and wizards and conquering Iceland. I don't know why conquering Iceland irks me more than fairies and wizards, but it does. Technically, reading the text as is, Geoffrey does seem to indicate seasons passing in between the year intervals, suggesting that the 12, 9, and 5 years aren't necessarily in direct succession to one another, but it's still really a stretch to extrapolate out the missing 23 years required to push Badon back to 493 in this narrative. This isn't even factoring in the tales of Arthur's famous Knights of the Round Table, many of which are born and live full lives with children of their own all within Arthur's reign, which would be a lot easier with the 493 date. It's a bit like one of those stress balls where if you squeeze one side, the innards go all lopsided on the other end, and you can't get it to squeeze into one shape. Don't even get me started on the Grail Quest, which supposedly took place 454 years after the death of Jesus. At the latest, that would put us at 487, well before any attested date for Badon, and you can probably start to see why this is giving me an aneurysm.

All of that aside, I think it is interesting to note that Geoffrey has Arthur's conquest of Rome set in 537, which would line up exactly with the historical reconquest of Rome by Belisarius. I have to wonder if there was ever some tradition associated with this that just completely went over Geoffrey's head or if it's simply coincidence. Either way, it's certainly something I'll be using in my project. Honestly, given Arthur's probably mythical nature and the complete nonsense any of his timelines written centuries later are, Monty Python's 932 (a number they chose at random just because they thought it was funny) may as well be the correct date. It's certainly the first image that always comes to my mind when I think of King Arthur anyways. Speaking of which…

Design notes, this was way more difficult than I was expecting it to be. Not for lack of reference images, but for an overabundance of them. I think the problem with coming up with a unique design for King Arthur is that he pretty much is the basis for the stereotypical silhouette of a medieval king. King Arthur is what pops into everyone’s mind when they're told to envision a generic ruler. Grant it, many of these interpretations are based more on the clothing of Geoffrey's time than the Late Roman Period in which Arthur actually lived, which does slightly narrow things down a bit I suppose. I primarily took inspiration from Walter Crane's illustrations for Henry Gilbert's 1911 book "King Arthur's Knights", and N.C. Wyeth's illustrations for the 1922 edition of "The Boys' King Arthur", with some bits and bobs thrown in from Howard Pyle's 1903 illustration of Arthur pulling the sword from the stone and Charles Butler's famous 1903 painting of Arthur donning the crown. For his shield, which is supposed to bear the icon of the Virgin Mary, I referenced the wall paintings of the Hagia Sophia. One has to wonder how Mary feels about her face taking the brunt of all those spears and swords.

Excalibur meanwhile is pretty much my own design. I'm actually really happy with the concept sketch I drew, but sadly it seems it was too intricate to show up very well in the scan. I'll probably draw a larger picture of the sword itself just to show off the details and maybe go more into the history of the weapon which is a bit beyond this blurb. I primarily made it a combination of a Roman spatha and the Celtic man-handled swords. I also threw some Ogham engravings on there, which did manage to show up quite clearly in the scan. I'm happy for that, at least. I'm actually quite happy with the design overall. It may be a little too medieval in some areas, but I still think this is an Arthur I'd expect to come galloping into battle alongside the real MVP, Belisarius. Sorry Arthur, he's just so much cooler than you. You probably didn't exist anyway so you probably don't mind. Take it up with Mary. You gotta answer for messing up her face like that anyways.